Just to prove that I'm not a silly, technophobic, nostalgic old bat, here's proof that the past was sometimes heaven compared with the present, at least for supply teachers. I know, because I've been one. It's always been a tough job. Fielding, a teacher for his whole working life, swears he'd rather clean the stinking fat off sewer walls than be a supply teacher. Kiddies prefer their usual teachers, with whom they have a relationship. Not some strange creature trying their absolute best to teach whatever subject they've been lumped with. Like me, ordered to teach Bengali, science and CDT, about which I knew diddly-squit.

But at least we had the council supply desk. What a sensible arrangement. The schools phoned in with what they needed, the regular pool of supplies rang to find out, or the desk rang them, and everything went swimmingly, more or less.

Then it all went to hell in a handcart. Private agencies started to take over, and sliced a chunk out of the teachers' wages for themselves. I remember earning about £120 a day in the 1980s from the council pool, while agency supply teachers earned only about £70. Naturally I wouldn't want to tar them all with the same brush. Some agencies are probably saints, but in my experience, they were usually stinkers, such as ISS. Hiding offshore, based in the Channel Islands, ISS is an umbrella company employing thousands of supply teachers. Lucky them. They don't have to pay national insurance.